Zombies of Fall River
by Serinity46
Summary: Summoned by spell-weavers on the planet of Fall River to close the Undead Gate, Sharada and the Doctor find themselves faced with a creepshow of creatures. Can they find a way to close it, and do the impossible and bring back Donna? 4th Sharada fic.
1. The Undead Gate

On a distant planet, beneath a brilliant deep pink and red sunset, a group of four people, shrouded in flowing black robes, stood facing each other in a circle, gathered in a forest near to a trickling stream, in a small clearing of trees which only held a few clinging autumn-colored leaves.

"I call upon this moonlit night," A woman, perhaps about forty, with long black hair tied loosely back with an ornate green hairpin, and large green stone hanging upon her neck, chanted, "And bid the North to help our plight." From her hand, she threw a fern onto rune drawn in the sand in the center of the circle.

"And to the East I seek of you," A second woman, younger than the first, around her early twenties with short-cropped red hair that was streaked through with blonde and black highlights, wearing a string of yellow beads looped around her neck, chimed, "Bring us change that is anew." A clover flower left her hand and joined to lay with the fern.

"Fires of the wayward sun," A male of the same age as the younger woman, tall, with spiky black hair tipped with dark red, and a stone of Jasper on his right ring finger, chanted, "The South shall see this deed is done." Like the two before him, he too tossed a piece of plantlife into the center, his being a sprig of cactus.

"Alas the Westward waters blow," Finally, the fourth of the party, a man who was the oldest of the bunch, looking elder with long grey hair that fell in waves down his back and an intricately carved walking staff that beheld a blue crystal on the end, spoke, "The storms to help Fall River flow." He let a single ripe blackberry fall from his outreached palm onto the sandy dirt.

Taking a step backwards from the offerings that laid upon the 'R' shaped rune, the four robed people began to chant in unison, their arms outstretched towards each other and eyes closed in concentration.

"Hear us, forces of great afar,

Beyond our plane, the distant star.

To save this world from darkened fate,

We bid to close the undead gate."

They repeated the chant twice more, a steady stream of misty energy growing between their outstretched arms with each spoken rhythm of words, growing in a shared power that surrounded the circle, a breeze from the center that they surrounded beginning to splash into the faces of the four spell-weavers. Leaves and branches of the autumn trees which surrounded them fluttered as the winds picked up, swirling in a tornado-like motion, and were soon flanked with a glowing bluish white light that illuminated the fast-falling dusk.

* * *

Gripping fiercely to the edge of the TARDIS console, with the Doctor trying desperately to get his ship back under control, Sharada finally managed to stand up, the swift motion of rocketing downward at a large speed continuing to be felt.

"But you _don't have the hand,_ why's it just _moving_?!" Sharada yelled in question.

"Ugh_,_ everything's gone blank," The Doctor, giving the screen a whack, much like people do if they're trying to get a finicky half-dead TV remote to work, said annoyedly, "Hold the Dimension Rotor down," He told her, as it was closer to her than him.

"Which one's that?" She asked, trying to locate whatever the Dimension Rotor was amongst a dozen-odd leavers, buttons, and devices that were near her.

"Round, spinny- _No_, the _other_ round spinny thing," He said, after she'd reached first for the wrong part.

The tubular center of the TARDIS was not at all moving in the least bit during this entire thing, which worried Sharada more than it would've if it had been in any kind of flight, but it just seemed to her like they were plummeting.

"Come on, TARDIS, come on, work," In a coaxing voice that she'd caught herself using with the sometimes stubborn bar code scanners at the tills she worked on at the chain grocery store, Sharada urged the TARDIS to kick into action, her right hand pressing upon the device he'd told her to hold. With a growing look of panicked frustration, she looked across the TARDIS to the Doctor, who was reaching things in a dozen directions, one Converse-clad foot upon the console.

With a sudden jarring force, the plummeting motion ended abruptly, throwing them both hard onto the metal-grated flooring on either side of the console.

"Well _finally_," The Doctor, getting up, took a look at the scanner that had just flickered back to life, "What'd you do that for, eh? And why are we on _Fall River_?" He wondered, once seeing where they were.

"Fall River, MA? Like the city near Boston?" Sharada, as she got up off the floor, looked to the Doctor, in question, "Oh, I have a friend who lives in Fall River, one of my Leaky friends who I talk to on Livejournal and stuff, I'd _love_ to meet her in real life, what date are we at?"

"Fall River the _planet_," He said to her, "Planet of eternal Fall, Autumn year-round, every year in it's existence… fitting name, really. Could've sworn it was called something else though, I mean 'Fall', that was always there, why not throw 'Fall' into the name of a planet that it's always October-ish in, but 'River'… there's something off about that." He pondered, throwing a switch just before heading over to the doors.

"Do people ever re-name planets?" Sharada, who'd completely forgotten about getting her phone out of her purse, headed to the door as well, eager to see Fall River, the planet.

"Might've, maybe they-" The second they stepped out from the TARDIS, the Doctor paused from that track, "And we have a welcome party. Hello, I'm the Doctor, this is Sharada… are you the ones who called the TARDIS here?" He asked, introducing themselves to the four ritually robed strangers that gazed in astonishment at the two of them.

"Saraswati," The young pixie-cut woman in yellow and black said before anyone else could say anything, gazing at Sharada with an appreciative nod.

"Huh?" Sharada said at this.

"Hindu goddess, shares your name, probably nothing important," The Doctor mentioned to Sharada, looking at the four Fall River citizens who surrounded them. "Though why you lot would know of Earthen mythology, I don't know...?"

"The ways of Earth are quite prominent in our world, Doctor," The black-haired woman said, "We've just improved them."

"Are you Wiccans?" Sharada asked the four suddenly, thinking that, with their black robes and the large rune etched into the sand dirt beneath her feet, they looked slightly like a small coven.

"Wicca, that is a mere Earth religion," The woman, Roan, shook her head at this, "We are the weavers of words and elements, a joined energy beyond what your primitive human 'Wiccans' could ever accomplish. And yes, we did call your vehicle here," She finished, answering the Doctor's earlier question, before fixing her large forest-green eyes upon both the Doctor and Sharada, who stood just outside of the large blue box behind them.

"You are to close the undead gate, restore us from this terrored state. We bit that you shall never go," Roan began to chime, and was joined by the other three, "Unless the ember hope's aglow."

"We are sorry," The younger woman, Illume, said, apologetically, once they had finished those verses of their chant.

"For what?" The Doctor asked, "We'll help you close these gate-things if you'd like, it's really no problem-"

"Good to know it isn't, because you won't ever be able to leave until you do," Illume told them, "That is… that is what that incantation ensured, and why I am sorry about it."

"What d'you mean, '_we won't be able to leave_'?" The Doctor inquired. "What happens if we _do_ try to leave, or have to? Not that we plan on it, but…"

"I'm fine with helping your city, you don't have to _force_ us to," Sharada began as well, unnerved by the whole 'won't ever be able to leave' bit.

"You will become frozen in the Glace of Eternity," The elderly man, Wayve, spoke up, "If you attempt to leave before the deed is done. Like this," He waved his left hand flowingly, a cold energy seeping through the air in their direction. Within a second of the frigid air hitting her body, Sharada became ice, unmoving and frozen to the spot, the entirety of her and what she was wearing turning to an opaque ice sculpture of the ditzy light golden brunette.

"Reverse it… _now!_" The Doctor, upon seeing his iced companion, ordered Wayve and the others, an anger to his voice.

"As you wish," Wayve gave a wave of his hand again, muttering something under his breath, "That was only a show of what would happen to the both of you forever if you shall desert us before you are finished."

From beside the Doctor, Sharada gave a sudden gasp of breath the moment the, this time warm, energy reached her body, her skin, hair, clothes, and everything else returning to normal, though she had no idea what had actually just happened.

"What… did something just happen, what the hell was that?" She looked around, a slight disoriented feeling as if she'd blinked and everything changed much faster than it should have in a second's time.

"Glace of Eternity, you were turned to ice, for a moment," The Doctor told her, his right arm subconsciously coming around to lay a hand near her opposite shoulder.

She didn't quite know what to say to this… she'd turned to _ice_, literal _ice_, as in 'the statue that killed Eva Longoria's character in Over Her Dead Body' _ice_?

"Help us," Illume pleaded, not weaving an incantation, just honest pleading, her eyes clouded with a certain witnessed sorrow, "Please? I am very sorry about the ensurement."

"So what do we have to _do,_ to close this 'Undead Gate'?" Sharada asked the four in front of herself and the Doctor, "And who decided to _open_ something called an 'Undead Gate'?" She remarked, thinking that opening gate-portal-ect-type things with the word 'Undead' in the title was just _asking_ for a horror movie to happen.

The twenty-something male, Pyron, spoke up for the first time at this question, his deep voice resonating clearly through the slightly chilled fall air as dusk was growing ever closer, the sky no longer a burnt reddish pink.

"Into the darkness, if you dare,

To walk amidst the sleeping air,

Where ghouls be seen and ghosts be near,

Beyond the gates of Hell, you fear,

They hide in shadows, lie and wait,

A bitter end will be your fate,

When shocking terrors come to sight,

These are the creatures of the night," Pyron recited effortlessly, leaving just the stir of a blowing silence as he finished.

"It's that way, through the swamp, into the graveyard, past the garden, and somewhere in that house on cherry hill. If you hit the town and the bar, you've gone too far," Illume concluded, a tinge of exasperation to her voice, "Honestly, do you lot have to get so dramatic about it _every_ time?"

* * *

**Disclaimer: I Do Not Own that last verse thingy, about the creatures of the night, it belongs to the band The Creepshow. Lots of lyrics from The Creepshow are gonna pop up in this fic, because it's basically based off of a bunch of their songs. **


	2. Creatures Of The Night

The pair, Sharada and the Doctor, set off in the direction that Illume had pointed out, into a path through the trees.

"Does anything good _ever_ come from directions that include 'through the swamp, into the graveyard'?" Sharada commented, rhetorically, soggy leaves in colors varying between her own gold and slightly copper faceted light brown, Donna's rich ginger, and Martha's mocha black hair, un-crunching as she walked over them. It must've rained here recently, the fall probably being a lot like the wet Vancouver falls (or springs… or summers… or winters…) back home.

"It's a lot like Earth here," She said to the Doctor, beside her, as they walked the narrow path that was worn into the ground from use. Being from where she was, a small town on the sticks of her already small city, where the term 'neck of the woods' was quite literal, she was actually quite used to forests kind of like this.

"It is," The Doctor agreed, "Very… Vancouver. That's where you're from, Vancouver, right?"

"No, well sort of, like, I'm 'Vancouverite'," She said, meaning that she knew the local stuff, like 'The Fireworks', 'Robson Street', 'PNE', and 'Skytrain', "But I'm not really in the city, kinda in the country and the woods and all… so, if it's always fall here, does that mean they're always selling Pumpkin Spice Lattes at whatever they've got for a coffee shop? I _love_ those, I'd love one right now, I haven't had them in _so long_, cuz they stop selling them at Starbucks and all sometime in the winter. The Pumpkin Frappuchinos are good, too. Oh, I miss New Zealand; they had these really good, like, what where they called, Iced Chocolate, yeah, Toffee Nut Iced Chocolates at Starbucks. Oh, and Paeroa!" Sharada continued, "We _have_ to stop at New Zealand for that, I _miss_ those!"

"Paeroa?" The Doctor repeated, asking Sharada, "Going to sound a bit stupid I bet, but what _is_ a 'Paeroa'?"

"You don't know that Paeroa is?! '_World famous in New Zealand'_ L&P, Paeroa?!" Sharada could almost not believe this, "I thought you've been to New Zealand, you said it was beautiful, how can you _not_ have ever had an L&P?! There's this little town in the North Island called Paeroa, I've been through it, and they've got this big little monument Paeroa bottle." She began on, squeefully fondly remembering seeing the statue of the L&P bottle.

"I was busy! Got there and less than a half-hour later every piece of glass in the whole of Auckland vanished," The Doctor defended, "Nearly fell out of the Sky Tower."

"Why'd all the glass disappear?' She asked, curious.

He explained, as they continued to walk, about the Keriaora's plan to use all of the glass they'd beamed away to create a giant glass Kiwi that would absorb the life force of the entire country of New Zealand, and how he'd, of course, thwarted it.

"Do you _ever_ just go somewhere and _not_ have something like that happen?" She laughed, "Some tourist spot that just _stays_ a tourist spot without some alien trying to take over the planet every two seconds!"

"I have, with people, course I have," He said, "But you'd never see it, 'cause that's boring, where's the fun in that? You lot, you want the danger, the excitement, and most of the time that's what happens, it really is 'always like this', but, there's a few brakes between the madness…well, occasionally… well, rarely…"

"I don't think this is one of them," Sharada stated the obvious, with a smile, "I forsee … a great deal of 'running for our lives from stuff that's trying to kill us'," She said, in a kind of affected Trelwaney-like manner.

"Oh, but you like the whole 'running' thing," The Doctor grinned at her.

"To a point," She said back.

It was there that they laid eyes upon the swamp, an eerie beauty of stretching pitch black waters and dark greenish blue mossy grass, with deadened trees sticking out like random pale brown skeletal figures.

_I died long ago, a legend became of my story,_

_A cold blood thirsty creature who roams through the night…_

"Ooh, there's something _moving_ in there," Sharada beamed, catching sight of a dark shape sliding through the moonlit blackened water. "Cool…_ creepy_, but cool."

There was a path of the marshy bluish green ground which wove through the black-watered swamp in a long mound, and as they began to tread over the grass, they were met with a pair of glowing bright blue eyes peering out of the depths, and soon were joined by even more eyes, shining like many blue, green, and red fireworks.

"What _are_ they?" Sharada asked, fascinated, her voice barely a whisper. She could see the eyes belonging to silhouette-like jet black heads, which looked both human and slightly demonic. The creatures in the water did not make any move to attack or disturb Sharada and the Doctor, though, just silently keeping watch of the newcomers that made their way through the dryer parts of the swamp.

_I was long ago, when I abandoned my sweetheart,_

_I'll catch her again, giver her eternal death from a bite…_

"Creatures of the Night," Was the Doctor's response to her question, the aquatic creatures beginning to swim faster, in rhythm to some invisible beat. There was a faint sound in the air around the swamp, something like singing, but he couldn't quite tell which one it was coming from. "D'you hear that?"

Sharada nodded, watching as one of the creatures hoisted itself up onto a bank on the other side of the swamp with an un-human amount of grace. I was a he, she assumed from his build, with a sleek tangle of black hair, and the same smooth ebony flesh as was on their heads, a mixture of skin and scales.

…_No mortal soul will ever catch me. _The creature, with a smirk upon his face, dived back into the crisp dark waters, slinking through them rapidly until neither Sharada nor the Doctor could see his shape in the deep waters anymore.

"Looks deep," Was Sharada's comment, a glance at the glistening water as she stepped gingerly onto another soggy mound of grasses and moss, just behind the Doctor. In the forest at the edge of the swamp, up ahead, she spotted another of the creatures, a female this time, her black seaweed-like hair reaching to her waist. In her arms, she cradled a young woman, most likely no older than twenty five, who, unlike the Creatures of the Night, looked to be human, though pale and unconscious. Sharada wondered, with a pang, if the woman was dead.

With the unconscious woman held in a limp bridal-style, the creature made her way smoothly back into the water, pausing once she was in to where the water reached the woman in her arms.

_Hiding in hell, I feel through the glistening water,_

_On this moonlit night, I carry her deep through the swamp,_

The creature gave a serene and slightly mournful look around, her wild electric blue eyes briefly meeting with the human and Time Lord who watched her, before sinking her pointed teeth into the woman's neck, breaking the skin with an ooze of blood which the creature gently lapped up, a faint sucking sound enduring until it was broken by a careful, but passionate, kiss of the creature's dark lips upon the wound.

She looked over again to Sharada's direction, noticing the impression of both kind curiosity and wary fear upon the Canadian. Her glowing blue eyes locked with Sharada's regular human, green-colored, ones, as if she intended to be speaking to Sharada directly.

_My mutated heart surrounds her, for she is my darling,_

_I'll never surrender the beauty that lies in my arms, _

It was that same sort of sound, those words, like a song, that was heard by both Sharada and the Doctor, though the creature was not moving her mouth in the slightest. She looked wicked, yet compassionate, as she placed the woman, who was now slightly stirring, but not yet near awake, onto an isolated mound of land beside her.

Sharada, looking to the creature who was watching over the woman, had a billion thoughts and questions running through her mind, though none quite came out as she couldn't think of which one to say first, so she just stood there, looking in interested awe at the creature.

_I am a creature of the night, seeping through the blackened water,_

_Listen to the moonlight whisper,_

The creature, content about the woman, gave a swift dive into the water, and popped up again, slipping effortlessly through the water without making the smallest of splashes, closer to where Sharada and the Doctor were. She looked at them with that same locking gaze as she had before.

_Darkness our disguise, we can see what's going through your mind,_

_Breathing our demise, we can see the terror in your eyes…_

A smile broke into the creatures face, and she gave them a knowing nod, before diving back over to where her love lay, regaining consciousness into becoming undyingly alive, but eternally dead.

As the Doctor and Sharada stepped off the final marshy platform and onto the woods on the other side, the eerily telepathic songlike sound continued to sweep through the moonlight that surrounded the swamp, the Creatures of the Night slinking through the water in a rhythmic, slightly demonic, frenzy, the glowing eyes occasionally popping back up to have a glance at the pair before diving deep into the water again.

_We are the creatures of the night, _

_We're all living in eternal hell, _

_We're all bound eternally to hell, _

_We're all living in eternal hell,_

_We're all bound eternally to hell!_

* * *

**A/N: The song is Creatures of the Night by the Creepshow, which I Do Not Own.**


	3. Zombies Ate Her Brain

**A/N: Though this fic does not contain as many mentions of Journey's End events as the previous fic in this series, The Potter Predicament, does, I'm just gonna warn ya right now that, since it's taking place after series 4, there's probably going to be a few finale spoilers in passing comments ahead. So, er, if you're reading this and you haven't seen Journey's End yet, consider yourself warned, I suppose.**

**Otherwise, enjoy, and thanks for reading :)**

* * *

It was not more than about ten more feet through the forest from the swamp before Sharada and the Doctor laid eyes upon the graveyard. It looked fairly much like any other large cemetery you might find on Earth, with dull grey tombstones and the occasional cross or statue sticking up from the ground in uniform rows.

There was a small swinging metal gate to enter through between them and the graveyard, which beheld more than its share of cobwebs covered in tiny black spiders.

The Doctor, who pushed through it easily, looked back when he noticed that Sharada had not followed, but instead was looking at the gate, trying to find the least spider-ey place on it to touch. She settled instead on booting it with her foot.

"Take it you're not a fan of spiders?" The Doctor, looking to Sharada as she came through the gate in a hurry, said to her.

She shook her head vehemently.

"No, I'm almost as scared of them as Ron Weasley is," She said, with a slight smile, to the Doctor, "_Hate_ them. Please don't _ever_ take me to a planet where there's giant spiders."

"Now why would I _purposely_ go to 'the planet of the giant spiders'?" The Doctor, as they started to walk the path through the graveyard, remarked.

"You would." She said with a laugh, "If there was something incredibly… _something_… going on there."

"Oh, so I can cross Metabolis 3 out of the plans, then?" He kidded.

"Yeah, that and wherever the planet the Racnoss are from. Sorry," She added hastily, feeling guilty upon catching the look in his eyes when she mentioned the Racnoss.

"No, it's- " He began, not completely sure where he was going with this, "You can mention stuff, you, know, it doesn't matter- "

The Doctor was a bit thankfully cut off by a nudge from Sharada, who was pointing to something on the other side of the graveyard. Skeletons, four of them, each digging a hole into the ground.

"Love it, very POTC," She smiled fangirlishly at the sight. Yeah, tiny spiders freaked her out, but 'living' skeletons? Apparently no big deal.

"Gravediggers," The Doctor declared, seeing the moving skeletons, then looked to Sharada, "Fancy meeting one?"

"Yeah," She answered brightly, nodding enthusiastically, "Do they talk?"

"_Course_ they talk! C'mon," He flashed her a grin as the two of the hurried excitedly over to where the Gravediggers were.

Unknown to either of them, or to the skeletons at work digging a deep grave, a girl, about fifteen, was absently strolling on the other side of the graveyard fence, unaware of those inside of the cemetery, deep in her thoughts to herself, her red-lipped lightly pale face slightly shrouded by a curtain of straight cocoa brown hair.

It was at that moment, just as the Doctor and Sharada reached the skeletal workers, that they heard a piercing female shriek.

Whirring around in the direction that the scream had echoed from, they saw nothing but bush and trees beyond the fence on the other side of the graveyard, though looked around wildly for the source of the scream.

From behind them, a voice spoke up.

"Another Zombie victim, most likely." One of the skeletons, a male by the name of Danson, said, "Who took a walk down by the other side of the graveyard fence."

"_Zombies_?" Sharada repeated. What the heck _didn't_ Fall River have, anyways?

"We have been plagued by them since the opening of the Undead Gate," Danson nodded his skull, his bare yellowed jawbone clicking slightly, "They don't bother _us_, but they love your kind. They give us almost _too_ much work, nowadays." He gestured a bony hand towards the coffin-shaped hole in the ground that they had been digging out of the brown earth.

"Who was it that _opened_ the Undead Gate, anyways? 'cause the words 'Undead Gate' sound like a textbook _definition_ of things under the list of 'Do Not Open', and not just 'do not open until Christmas', or 'only open in case of fire', but as in 'do not open _ever_'," The Doctor said towards Danson and the other skeletal figures.

"Ask that to the Departed Fifth," Another skeleton, Scat, answered, shrugging his shoulder bones, "A legend says it was she who did the deed."

"Fifth what? Skeleton?" Sharada, noticing that there was just four of the Gravediggers, asked curiously.

"Never," Scat shook his bony head, a tinge of disgust to his voice, "It would be off with their head if it were one of our band," He mimed slitting a throat with the bones of his narrow knobby finger.

A third of the skeletal Gravediggers, who had, unknown to anyone else, ran off ahead in the direction of the shriek to see, returned at that moment.

"It is too late, the Zombies ate her brains." The skeleton announced, gravely, then took a surprising hold of both Sharada and the Doctor's wrists as they started to head over to where he'd came from. His hand bones felt eerily cold upon their skin, "The Creatures of the Night will take care of her," The Gravedigger told them, with a shake of his head, "_Go_, and hurry, before they attack another."

"But what _is_ the Undead Gate? How're we supposed to close it?" Sharada asked, a glance to where, beyond a few trees past the gate at the top end of the cemetery, she could see a part of a large house.

"No idea, but there must be a way. You are not the first to come through here to attempt it," The first skeleton, Danson, said, then noticed that they were still more or less standing in the same spot still, "_Go_," He waved them off impatiently in the direction of the second metal gate up ahead, which lead out of the hallowed grounds.

* * *

It was into a small stretch of dark forest on the path from the cemetery to the large garden in front of the old house. Though Sharada would trip up occasionally, due to the shadowy thickness of the evergreens which made up this chunk of forest, a childhood of playfully running though the woods that surrounded her North American home gave her quite good footing in these conditions.

The Doctor was talking about something, though Sharada was barely listening, her eyes instead perked to the sound of the Zombies that no doubt were around this area. Thinking she heard something rustle through the trees, she nudged him, hard.

"What?" He asked, looking around through the thick dark trees, the pathway so shrouded in their shadows that the moonlight up above almost escaped their surrounding completely.

"Nothing, I just thought I heard something over there," She said, pausing to listen, though she didn't hear the sound again. "Coulda been a bird… a flesh-eating bird," She added, with a nervous laugh, before something came to mind which made her spurt with concealed laughter, much to the Doctor's curiosity.

"If this were one of my fanfics and some indie song was randomly playing, we'd be snogging right now," She said finally, "We'd be _so_ snogging! Cuz I had this thing with, like, characters making out in the dark, it was so stupid," She laughed, "still love it though."

"I think I've read that one, liked it, actually," the Doctor nodded. He appreciated the pairing that she'd done for that fic quite a lot, remembering back to how Donna had said that Sharada was a 'shipper'.

"Yeah, you and her," She smiled fondly, "So, you've read my fanfics? When did you read my fanfics?" Sharada asked, surprised, a tinge of embarrassment to her, due to the fact that some of them were quite awful.

"Sometime in the morning, before you got up," He said, "Drunk Daleks, genius," He grinned, "Have to say, that Serena Rose in that other fic was a bit of a Mary-Sue, though, and, er, some of my lines… yikes."

"That was my _first shot_ at writing you!" Sharada exclaimed pitchedly, as if to make an excuse for the rubbish characterization, "No, I'm _still_ about the worst at you in the world," She said with a laugh.

"Oh, I wouldn't say the worst. According to Donna, there's some _really_, _really,_ bad fics out there… oh, and the Martha vs Rose hate-fics, those are a whole category of awful." He commented, "Speaking of fics, did you ever find that Dalek thing she mentioned?"

"Yeah… that was… weird." Sharada summed up. "And how the hell did it get you _preggers_? I mean, I know fanfic characters are really _stupid_ when it comes to getting pregnant in fanfic, but that didn't even make _sense_! It was like the Harry/Basilisk one!"

"Right… so some author out there wrote Dalek/Doctor Mpreg," The Doctor, who had, himself, not actually read the fic in question, and was just a bit horrified by this idea, "I think I officially think that your lot is just a bit messed up. More than a bit. Extremely."

"It's not even just your fandom… _Donato. Incest._" She stated plainly, boldly emphasizing the two words.

"As in 'Big Brother US' Dick and Danielle Donato?" He asked her, an eyebrow raised.

"Oh yeah," She nodded, unfortunately, "You haven't been truly disgusted till you read the words 'Daddy, cum all over my face'… that's like, if there was Jenny/You fanfic, just… _wrong_. But the one where Bart Simpson raped and murdered Lisa was worse… you don't _ever_ want to read that fic, trust me."

"You know, I think I'd be a bit terrified to come across some of the people from the fan world," the Doctor commented, with a slight smile.

"Oh, we all write some fucked-up fics sometimes," Sharada said, "I got halfway into writing a crossover about vehicle femslash once… guess what one of those vehicles was?"

"Please don't say it was the TARDIS…" He shook his head with a slight groan, knowing that was what was coming.

"Alright, I won't. But it was," She added.

The Doctor just looked to Sharada, an expression of ironic amusement on his face, before cupping an arm around her.

"You're just as bad as the rest… and now I have to know what the other vehicle in that pairing was," He said to her.

"Why? You gonna introduce them? Start up a psychic vehicle matchmaking service?" Sharada kidded, "It was a bus from a show I used to watch when I was a kid. The-"

She broke off, hearing another rustle in the trees, this time definitely from something larger than a bird or a squirrel. It was followed by more of the same sound, getting closer each time.

"Zombies?" Sharada, fearfully gripping to the Doctor with her hand at the sound of the unseen thing in the woods, asked to him, hoping it wasn't.

"Just possibly," The Doctor said, a guarded tone to his voice, hearing more than one rustle coming from different directions, accompanied by monotonous deep-throated growls. "Get ready to run…"

"Run _where_?" She pointed out, the sounds of advancing Zombies through the dark woods encircling them from all sides.

"_That way_," The Doctor, swiftly taking her hand in his, began a fast run with Sharada through a break in the woods between two sounds of the growls and groans of the brain-eating Zombies.


	4. The Garden

_A/N: Maajjjoorrr Journey's End spoiler alert for the 2__nd__ half of this chapter. I have no idea if anyone who might be reading this hasn't seen all of series 4 yet, but IDK, it still hasn't aired in some countries, so I'm gonna warn anyways, just to be safe._

* * *

Darting between trees and over brush and bramble, Sharada and the Doctor made towards the other side of this forest, only slightly aware of how close the advancing hoard of Zombies were to them as they closely evaded several as they ran through the nearly pitch-dark forest.

Just as they were no less than about ten feet from the end of the forest, Sharada felt herself being thrown to the ground from behind at the same time she felt a piercing pain just above her left ankle as row of inch-long incisors ripped easily through her jeans and deep into her skin like a steel trap, penetrating into her calf muscle.

The suddenness of the attack broke her grasp with the Doctor, as he felt, and heard, the eighteen year old North American fall in a cursing gasp of pain.

With her other foot, as she felt the Doctor hurriedly help her up, Sharada booted a kick to the Zombie's head. Wrenching herself from the grasp of the long, undead hands, Sharada got free finally, but at the sickening sound and anguished throe of a breaking crack, the creature having forcefully twisted her ankle hard in an unnatural, opposite direction, breaking several bones and ripping muscles and tendons.

Though her grassy-hazel lagoon green eyes, the color of a lioness in a late-August British Columbian 'rainforest', threatened to fill reflexively with a mist of welling water against the pangs that coursed through her lower left leg, her body a flush with a sudden paling nausea at the immense pain, she had to keep moving out of the forest before the onslaught of brain-eating undead could catch up with them again.

Thankfully, it wasn't that far until the pair hit the end of the evergreen-filled woods, moving as quickly as possible with the Doctor's arm supportively around Sharada and hers hung around him.

"Something about these fences…" the Doctor said, asidely, as he, heavily supporting the injured Sharada, came into a large garden, which was surrounded by a fence and swinging gate like the graveyard before it had been.

The flowers and greenery of this garden all looked a state between dead and alive, blackened, but not completely withered, as if frozen for centuries in a portrait, small pale purple lights glancing off of them from the full moon up above. In the center of it all stood two intricate ice sculptures of what looked to be humans with some zebra-like features. If the Doctor had not been, at that moment, so concerned about Sharada, he would have recognized them as being from the Zeneh race, a species that lived several hundred galaxies away from Fall River.

"Doctor…" Sharada said, her breathing jagged with the panic that was setting in about her situation. It wasn't the pain or injury that bothered her the most, really… it was that, at the moment, they were supposed to be seeking out to either hopefully close some portal to the undead or else be turned eternally to ice, and she could hardly walk, let alone _run_.

"It's okay, don't worry, I've got you," the Doctor said, assuringly, to her, as he eased her to a seat on the mossy ground.

"I think I really do need 'a doctor', right now," Sharada light-heartedly said, as the Doctor gently pushed up the blood-soaked leg of her jeans and slipped off her black sneaker and grey and light blue patterned sock to have a look at her deeply punctured leg and badly broken and torn ankle.

Attempting to stem the blood that streamed down the slightly tanned skin of her calf with one hand, the Doctor traced his other lightly upon her unnaturally positioned ankle.

"Sharada, you trust me, right?" He looked to her, his eyes, which were reminding her so much of a caramel macchiato right now, suggesting that there was more to that sentence to come.

Sharada nodded simply; of course she did. Well, unless it was something stupid, but she still trusted _him_, even if she didn't think much of the said idea.

"Good," He continued, with a small nod, "Because this is going to hurt."

"It _already_ hurts," She said, her hand on the shoulder of his which was closest to her, absently toying with the fabric of his suit, "It's still a bit better than that thing in New York with Donna and that psychic psycho, though… 'cept I wasn't actually _injured_ with that, it was all just- _Oh Fuck!_" Sharada's grip tightened clenchingly, her hand, which had previously just been lightly resting upon the Doctor's shoulder, digging in in response to the sudden bolt of pain that shot through the area surrounding her ankle as the Doctor righted it's alignment, "You didn't say you were going to do _that_!"

"Well, what did you think I meant?" He said, "You alright, though?"

"I wasn't thinking about _anything_, really…" She answered, "I'm fine, but it's still broken and ripped up and everything, and we don't exactly have time to just call this 'closing the Undead Gate' thing off for a few months 'til it heals… unless _you_ just go off and do it yourself, but does that mean _I'm_ going to get turned into ice because I can't?"

Her concerns seemed to unaffect the Doctor, though, as he heard her, for a slightly triumphant look splashed his face as he shifted closer to Sharada, placing his hand on her arm comfortingly.

"Do you know how lucky you are that this happened only about seven hours after I showed up at where you work?" He began.

"How is this '_lucky'?_" Sharada wanted to know, and what on earth how long she'd been traveling with the Doctor this time around had to do with anything.

"Because it's been _just_ under twenty-four hours, which means," the Doctor continued, "That I have just enough regenerative energy left over for _this_."

And with that, the second he finished talking, the Doctor's hands found their way to the sides of her head, just past her face and smoothly through her thick gold and copper faceted light brown hair, as he leaned in and snogged Sharada.

Sharada could barely believe it, as their lips touched and tongues met; _she_ was in a kiss with _the Doctor_. It was every fangirl's dream come true. It was _her_ dream come true, her _many_ dreams… and it was _good_. So good, that she hardly noticed the glowing warmth that was beginning to spread through the lower part of her left leg and reaching down to her foot, her eyes closed and savoring every second of their kiss.

When he finally broke off, she just looked at him, dazed for a moment.

"I didn't think people took these 'Irish' shirts seriously," She managed to jokingly say, finally, with an amused glance down at her low-cut shamrock green t-shirt. Sharada knew, though, that it wasn't the slogan that made the Doctor kiss her just then, "So, what was that about?"

"Your leg, does it hurt anymore?" He just asked her, though grinned slightly as he noticed the top she was wearing as well.

Sharada noticed, for the first time, that it didn't. Actually, looking at it, it didn't appear to be injured at _all_ anymore.

"You… what just… well how the hell does _that_ work?" She asked the Doctor, stunned.

"You know, that doesn't usually work on humans, well, I can't say I've ever tried it before, just sort of thought it up, to be honest," the Doctor admitted, pondering slightly, "But when you think of it, it _shouldn't_ really work on a human, should it?"

"Well, I _am_ 'human', I've got proof of that 'cause I was almost fed to a giant octopus because of how purely human I am," Sharada reminded him, thinking back to the incident on Europa where she and Donna almost became fish food because of how they were 'human' and 'from Earth', "_Plus_, when we were in New York, you said those berry things that Donna and I touched that made us go all X-Men only worked on humans."

"Oh, I do think you're human, course you're human. I'm just a bit surprised that transferring a small amount of specifically-directed post-regenerative energy to a human worked, is all." He said to Sharada. "D'you think you can stand alright now?"

"You seem to be able to do _anything_ with a snog," Sharada smiled, with a slight playful roll of her eyes, as she stood up, gingerly placing her weight on her no longer broken and torn ankle, which quickly changed to a look of biting realization, as her tone changed, "You never think of anything until it's too late!" She exclaimed toward the Doctor.

The Doctor just sort of looked at her, confused, in a look of wondering what she was suddenly on about.

"_Donna_!" Sharada said, pointedly, "Why didn't you just snog her? Apparently a snogging with a Time Lord can do just about everything _else_ on Earth, so couldn't it have done something to help her?"

"It wouldn't have been enough energy," He told her, a tinge of sadness to his voice that Sharada, though it was obvious that he was trying to act like he was alright, knew him well enough to detect, "Even with you I had to re-align the bones to make require less."

"It doesn't matter," Sharada shrugged almost apologetically, with a small smile, "I'm sorry I brought it up accusing and all that, I just, hoped, you know, that maybe you could still do that. And maybe you really could've, somehow, if you hadn't wasted it all on me."

She felt guilt-wracked, suddenly, because she'd take waiting for a broken ankle, a few torn muscles, and a bite to heal naturally any day if it somehow meant that the Doctor could've both regained Donna of her memories and stopped her brain from collapsing.

"It wouldn't have worked, alright?" the Doctor told Sharada, not testily, just honestly, for the reasons that he'd said. "Come on then, we should get moving if we don't want to end up like -them-," He motioned towards the ice sculptures that stood randomly amidst the garden. There was no doubt in either of their minds that the two frigid aliens were once put into the same position that they were.

* * *

_A/N: I have so noooo idea what that would actually feel like (and I hope I don't ever), so I hope I didn't either over-exaggerate the pain or underestimate it or whatever. Gah, it's a bloody angst-fest at some times with those two... gotta remember though that it's been only like seven hours since the Doctor left Donna and Sharada watched the finale. (I'm gonna just assume that maybe she got about four-ish hours of sleep in the TARDIS in Potter Predicament, the thing in 22nd century London only took maybe, at the most, two hours, and they've been on Fall River for about an hour now. I'm not sure how much time passed during the entire Journey's End episode, though... but maybe something at least less than a day, right?). _


	5. Sell Your Soul

_A/N: Mass Journey's End spoiler alert for this chapter, and, oh, hell, pretty much the rest of this fic and anything else in this series after this._

* * *

"Going into a Haunted House… with anyone but you, I'd think this was about this stupidest idea ever," Sharada commented, as they drew closer to the large old house on Cherry Hill.

"Just because it looks haunted, it doesn't mean it _is_ haunted," the Doctor said, as they came upon the black iron picket fenced gravel walkway up to the house.

"We just saw Zombies, skeletons, and swamp creatures; 'course it's haunted by _something_," Sharada replied, glancing at the rickety brown house, with random windows which looked to be smashed-in and contained cobwebs strung every which way, "Bet we see a ghost, though. Have you ever seen a ghost? I mean, a real live proper ghost, not some gas creature aliens or Cybermen? I have, when I was eight I saw one passing through our garage. I _totally_ believe in ghosts and all of that weird haunted stuff."

Just the second that the Doctor and Sharada stepped up onto the porch, the front door creaked open, leaving a considerable-sized gap to walk through. As they came into the house, Sharada was not particularly afraid of entering the house, since she loved the whole Halloween-ish thing, but it did also seem like big 'don't' on the list of 'how to survive in a horror movie'.

The bare wooden floor beneath them creaked, like a house that had not been lived in or centuries, and she could see a visible layer of several inches of dust upon a rickety antique coffee table which stood in the entrance hall.

"So… see a gate anywhere?" Sharada whispered towards the Doctor, as they made their way across the room. It was one of those kinds of feelings, a sense as if someone was staring at them straight in the back, though, upon glancing behind her, Sharada could see no one.

"Nope, just regular house-ey type things," the Doctor said, a hand brushing away the long cobwebs that hung like a curtain in front of the staircase, "But I get the feeling that we're not really looking for a physical gate, here."

"Yeah," She nodded, carrying on up the lopsided staircase, "I keep picturing it like some random time-traveling thingie that gives off a lot of blue light."

"Well, there you've just described the Sonic Screwdriver," the Doctor commented.

"But you know what I mean, a portal, like… _Charmed_, or a Stargate or something," Sharada continued.

As they came into the hallway at the top of the crooked staircase, their presence in the house was suddenly greeted by a tall blonde female, looking to be somewhere in her mid-thirties, perhaps, in a flowing pale grey dress, who spoke out as soon as she saw the Doctor and Sharada.

"Ah, so two more have come to do the bidding that my fellows cannot," The woman said, with a smile.

"Your fellows?" the Doctor began to ask her. "You mean that lot of spell-weavers across the wood?"

"Yes, I do know them very well, we were quite close… once," She answered, "But no matter, you are here to help them, no?"

Something occurred to Sharada, about this woman. '_The Departed Fifth'_…

"So, you used to be the fifth element," Sharada surmised, "Because there's a reason that there's five sides to a pentagram, for the five pagan elements; earth, air, water, fire, and spirit… you're the one in their circle that used to be spirit, right?"

"That I am, Dvina, closest to the powers be," the blonde, Dvina, nodded, pronouncing her name with the 'D' nearly silent. She then looked to Sharada, as if with a slight curiosity, like she was getting a reading of her, "Though I can see your element as clear as day, that of the wind and the ice and the snow."

"Well, I _am_ from Canada," Sharada shrugged, jokingly.

"The second of a collided C, carrying what is never to be forgotten," Dvina continued, though, as she pronounced 'C' like the word 'sea', that was what both Sharada and the Doctor thought she had said, rather than the letter, "And just like everyone before you, and the circle of four, you could _never_ be able to close the gate between the realms of the living and the dead."

"Why not?" Sharada asked.

"Because I opened the gate via the Key of Reality, and only one who wishes to reverse what has been done without using the powers of the key to their own means would be able to," Dvina said, with an air of finality.

"What's a Key of Reality do, then?" She asked Dvina, though she had a feeling that the answer was exactly what it sounded like it did.

"Anything." Dvina said simply, her blue-grey eyes lit up by the prospect, "Think about it…reality. Anything you crave, anything about your life or the way of the worlds that you want to change, you can."

"Yeah, I'm totally not looking to take over the world or become super rich or something here," Sharada said, with a small upward flick of her eyes in annoyance.

"Oh, but I know…" Dvina said, the thoughts that she saw flutter through Sharada's mind as she looked into her slightly hazel-tinged green eyes, "Unusually, your desire is not of money, pleasure wrapped in leather, fortune, and fame… but you could still have it all, everything you crave. Everything at all… victory for your causes, prosperity and health for those you care about, and even," She continued, raising a knowing eyebrow at the improbability and desire which stuck out the most in Sharada's mind at the moment, "Ensure the promised forever, you know whose which I speak, all at just one tiny price on your part."

Sharada, who found Dvina's psychic act less than amusing, glared hotly at her, in response, reminded far, far, too much of that psychotic Yank from New York, Aldabra Sequoia, for her liking.

"The one you speak of is the only one, besides him," Sharada, indicating the Doctor beside her for a second, retorted in a pointed snarl, her eyes in a sharp hawk-like glower, "Who has ever read my thoughts without trying to twist them into some bargaining chip, so _shut up_."

"You should listen to her," the Doctor said towards Dvina, in support of Sharada, "Really, when she's defensive, she kicks. High. The last guy who tried to pull over all of this mind-reading stuff like you're doing got a foot to the side of his head." He said, almost conversationally, before his tone changed, "And me, you don't even want to know what I do when I get defensive, so I'm only going to say this once; stay out of Sharada's head."

Dvina just chuckled slightly.

"As you wish," Dvina shrugged, "You two are so charming, with your loyalty to each other and certain others… it's almost enough to disgust me, to be honest," She rolled her eyes, in exasperation, then looked just to the Doctor, "You wouldn't last a second with the Key of Reality, either."

"Oh, I've been tempted with much worse than load of voodoo," the Doctor said, "And your asking price really leaves a lot to be desired… you can change reality, but first you've got to sell your soul. Hmm… nope. Not buying it. Ninguna venta."

_Yay, 'random Spanish words', _Sharada thought in cocky sporker amusement at hearing this. Actually, she didn't know if it was Spanish, she just thought it sounded like it, it probably meant 'no sale' or something like that, she assumed. She wondered slightly what language those other things that she'd ever heard the Doctor say were for a second... well, the one was for sure French, and the other... well, that just made her want Italian food. They seriously would have to go to Italy at some point, she thought with a smile. _Renaissance Italy would be cool... whatever that is. Is that like a Renaissance Fair, with all of those dresses? Ooh, that could be pretty._

"But what a petty price to pay, to regain you girl from yesterday," Dvina told the Doctor.

"Are you actually serious?" Sharada, who'd heard about enough of Dvina's arguments and offers, said to her, in utter disbelief that the blonde actually though she was making any sense, "So, supposing we did 'sell our souls', well then we'd either just be _shells_ or become evil or something, so either way, we wouldn't still _be_ 'the Doctor' or 'Sharada', so even if the Reality Key thing did work, why the _hell_ do you think that Donna would _actually_ think that that's a _good_ idea? To be honest, I think she'd probably slap the Doctor for being so _stupid_. At the least, I mean, 'cause then she'd probably want to go after you or whoever the hell else is in charge of the whole 'soul-selling' thing, 'cause you know that whole 'loyalty' thing that you're so disgusted by? It kinda works both ways."

"Ah, but right now she doesn't know that you two exist, so she's probably about as loyal as-" Dvina began to dismiss, but was suddenly cut off her tangent by an enraged shove from Sharada.

"_Does it matter_?" Sharada, a hot fury of tears leaking from her shining green eyes, shot in daggered tones at Dvina. Just how fucking _dare_ this witchy bitch.

"The Storm has feist," Dvina, stepping forward, noted, challengingly, "But can the fire fueled be thrice," She began to concoct, but Sharada was right on que with it this time.

"North, West, East, and South," Sharada began, intently.

"…If yon waters turn to ice?" Dvina finished, at almost the exact moment that Sharada had proceeded in countering with:

"… Guard from which spews from her mouth."

Focusing on creating a shield of magickal energy blocking Dvina's spell from affecting either herself or the Doctor, Sharada staved off the attack. It was much to the Doctor's bemused surprise that the Earthen human could weld a working spell, actually.

"Yeah, don't ask," Sharada said, to the Doctor as she caught his look. It was a randomly long story involving nearly a decade of being a fan of Sabrina the Teenage Witch coupled by the fact that, about two years ago, she looked into Wicca for about a month once, that she'd gladly tell him all about, once they were finished here. "I could hold her off while you find the key."

Quickly, as the Doctor's arm came around Sharada's shoulders in a re-affirming squeeze, he whispered something quietly into her ear so that Dvina could not hear what he was saying to the fan, just before parting with her.


	6. Candykiss

Catching the Doctor's arm just as he turned away, Sharada looked a mix of confused and defiant at what he'd told her.

"No, I said while you _find_ it, I didn't mean…" She began, at a whisper, towards the Doctor, before coming out with it, "Once I kick her ass, or you know where it is, I'm coming _with_ you to close it. I can help, you know."

"Sharada, please, just don't," He started, "You don't know what it could do; your thoughts could slip to something, and the next thing you'd be standing there soul-less. It takes _focus_ to be able to operate a Key to Reality."

"Oh, like yours _wouldn't_!" She countered, "You ramble on about more useless off-topic stuff than _I_ do!"

Being that, back home in 21st century British Columbia, she'd once babbled on for about fifteen minutes strait to her dad about a fanfic series she was writing, and that she caught herself daydreaming about stupid things like her big brown pleather coat more times than she could remember while driving, this was quite saying something.

"Time Lord," the Doctor reminded, indicating himself, as if this proved his point. Sharada, however, didn't think it did, and simply rolled her eyes. If 'Time Lord' did not make for an excuse with Donna in Pompeii, it didn't make for any bigger of a one here.

"_Wiccan_." Sharada pointed out to him, about herself.

"You're a Wiccan?" the Doctor looked mildly surprised at her, for a second.

"No," She answered, truthfully, "But I know it."

Glancing past her, the Doctor saw that, while they'd been discussing this, Dvina had taken the opportune moment to vanish clear out of the hallway to God-only-knows where. With an odd sudden exuberant grin, the Doctor looked to Sharada.

"Oh, come on then, Stormy," He agreed finally, as he shook his head slightly, "You know, you're the perfect example of all that rubbish about how Potter books turn kids to witchcraft."

"Don't let Laura Mallory hear you say that," Sharada said, as they hurried down the hall towards the room at the end, from which a slight glow leaked through the ajar door, "And I'm not, I just looked into it for a little bit once."

"Is there anything you _haven't_ 'tried out once'," He asked Sharada, slightly amused at the way the numerous random things that seemed to wind their way into conversation were starting to rack up; he'd lost clear track of how many different clubs and activities she'd ever mentioned joining. Hell, _she'd_ nearly lost count of them all.

"Yeah, _lots_ of things, and I want to keep travelling with you 'till I do those and everything I've never even heard of yet," She told him, with an enthused smile, as they came to the door, "Ooh, that was a bit cheesy," She remarked on what she'd just said.

On the other side of the door, in the room they came into, was a globular device, about the size of a globe, which sat on a wrought-iron pedestal and emitted a bright white light from the center of it.

"Gate or Key?" Sharada pointed to the beach ball-sized orb.

"Key… I think," the Doctor squinted slightly at it, trying to figure it out, as they came closer to the glass ball.

"It looks like a big crystal ball," She said simply. She'd been expecting something more, well, key-like, but, thinking back, the Key to Time didn't look much like a house key, either, "It reminds me a bit of the Key to Time. So how do we, um, work it?"

As Sharada wondered this, she lazily slipped her hand into a pocket of the Doctor's and produced the sonic screwdriver, for no utter apparent reason, and began looking between it and the orb.

"What if we just explode it?" She suggested, shrugging at the look that he'd given her for pick-pocketing the screwdriver unannounced, "I bet you could totally just smash it open, with this, and everything it's done would just… stop, or something."

"The 'or something' would be pieces of _reality_ shattering; you could cause the world to be ruled by _bunnies_ doing that. And trust me, I've been to a planet where they do, it's a bad idea," He told her, "Though, I will say they throw one heck'va garden party, best carrot cakes in the entire universe and twice a month it's Easter holidays."

"_Bunnies_ rule a planet?!" She exclaimed, interested, "Which one's that?"

"Tontine 4, in the Horsehead Nebula," the Doctor told Sharada, "Could take you there after this, if you like, introduce you to President Cottontail."

"His name's actually Cottontail?" She laughed in wonder.

"_Her_ name is Cottontail," He corrected, "Bruges Cottontail. Ruled Tontine 4 for about, oh, ten years?"

"I've got to get a camera somewhere," Sharada grinned, definitely wanting to take pictures of Madame President, the rabbit.

"You know, there's one in the TARDIS somewhere, and…" the Doctor trailed off, a glance back at the glowing crystal globe, as if he'd just noticed it there, "Right, big ball of reality stuff, and we're standing here talking about bunny rabbits. See what I mean about the 'focus' thing?"

"Me? You're the one who started going off about carrot cake and garden parties!" Sharada exclaimed, in mock-insult.

"Yeah, well you… you continued it!" the Doctor claimed, through a slight grin, as he looked at her, "Oh, I'm rubbish with you. Really, when did I become so rubbish?"

"When you took on a fan instead of a proper companion," Sharada answered, quippingly.

"So, is it fair to say that I now assume you cheated your way completely through Attack of the Graske?" the Doctor said, kidding, though for all he knew, she could've.

"Well, I _did_ actually know a few of the answers because of a YouTube vid and some spoilers for the choice at the end, but that wasn't on _purpose_," She claimed, with a impish smile, before looking, too, to the orb on the black pedestal, "So, big ball of reality… stuff?"

"Yup," the Doctor nodded.

"What exactly do we _do_ with the big ball of reality stuff?" Sharada asked.

"Really? Honestly? I have no idea. Well, alright, I do have _one_ idea, a small idea that just might work," the Doctor began to tell Sharada, "If we can actually _focus_ on this thing for a minute."

"Alright, totally focusing, thinking about nothing but totally focusing on… whatever it is I'm supposed to be focusing about," She nodded, "So what do I do?"

The Doctor stepped around to the other side of the transparent-ish globe, then looked to Sharada, seriousness etched in his eyes.

"Put your hands on it," he told her, lowering his own to the sphere, "And _don't_ think of random things, especially not wishes and desires. Reality-benders are a bit… temperamental."

Sharada did so, the smooth glass expectedly warm upon her palms. She was just about to ask him what now, when a jarring charge shook through her, not painful, really, like a shock, but more of an unpleasantly full feeling of a growing static that resonated into her.

"It'll pass," the Doctor said to her, from across the orb, the feeling of being connected with the Key of Reality pulsing through him as well. When it slowed from the rush to more of a steady flow after a few more seconds, he continued, "Now, what we need, is a spell."

Sharada, looking over at the Doctor as he glanced towards her, looked at him in narrowed surprise.

"You're asking me?" She asked, a slight hint of incredulousness to her voice.

"Well, unless you want me to," He shrugged, "But you sort of have a knack for words and the sort… bit've a writer in you. Fanfic; coming up with all of these plots and plotpoints… and loopholes."

"Oh," She replied, with raised eyebrows, "Why is it you didn't want me to operate this thing, then, if you think I'd be so good at it?"

The Doctor just grinned.

"Like I really thought _you_, out of _everyone_, would have a problem controlling something mental? Hah, only kept telling you not to come 'cause we were in front of _her_," the Doctor admitted, truthfully, "Sorry about that. Knew you'd want to come though, raise a bit of an argument, and Dvina played into _exactly_ what I wanted her to do."

"What was that?" Sharada asked him, wondering where Dvina _had_ gone off to, and why she'd suddenly left like that.

"To bugger off when she thought we weren't looking," He told her, "To _not_ be keeping you busy with fighting her and leaving me to be the one to operate the Key to Reality. Because I could reverse it no problem, but _you_ could do something extra _and_ survive with your soul intact and in your own possession. And all because of something _completely_ unexpected! How crazy is that?!"

"Very," Sharada answered. She noticed that the Doctor had taken his hands off of the Key and was looking quite pleasantly thrilled about something, "Because I don't know what the hell you're talking about. Come on, tell me what's going on here, already!"

"Blimy, you are a bit more bossy than the last time, aren't you?" the Doctor commented, before spilling out with it finally, the idea that had been brewing in his mind ever since he noticed something gold-colored surge for just half a second in Sharada brought by the rush of anger when she'd shoved Dvina, "When I kissed you, back in the garden, I had no idea, actually, what transferring regenerative energy to a human would do. I thought it'd heal your leg, of course, and that was all I intended with it, to fix your ankle so you could run if you had to. Wouldn't want to leave you to the Zombies now, would I? But I did _not_ count on at all that it didn't just fade off like it would've if you were Gallifreyan; no, instead, the energy stayed with you, growing, actually, getting soaked up into your body and expanding like one of those dino-things… you know, the grow-your-own dinosaurs that you put in water and they plump up?" He searched for a second, but decided to forgo recalling the correct name for them and continued on with what he was telling Sharada, "Did you know that you're the first human to ever regenerate? Partially, or fully, or anything."

"So, are you trying to tell me you've made me immortal, I'm secretly a long-lost Time Lord, or that I'm a gigantic Mary Sue?" Sharada asked him, with a laugh, wondering what this strange new thing actually meant.

"A Mary Sue? Naw," the Doctor scoffed, "Funny thing about you humans that I pick up, is that you _keep_ being one way or another affected by Time Lord-ey things! I mean, first there was Rose, with the Time Vortex and Bad Wolf, then Jack becoming immortal because of that, and then Donna with the DoctorDonna, and now you!"

"Yeah, and two of those people nearly died because of it," Sharada remarked, then looked worried for a moment, as a pang of fear shot through her, "Am I going to die? Is the regeneration thing killing me?"

"No," the Doctor shook his head, assuringly, coming round to the other side of the sphere, "Completely the opposite. You're going to live. And so is Donna. Because the energy's grown to a large enough amount inside of you that you and your soul'll be protected. All that's left is for you to find the right incantation. If that's what you want to do, that is."

"Oh, it is, it _so_ is," Sharada could hardly believe this. It was brilliant, "So what exactly should I do, then? I mean, obviously, I bend reality so that she magically can remember everything without her head imploding and all that, but is there sort of like, something specific to it?"

The Doctor thought for a second. There wasn't really much more to it than that, except for a few things, he supposed, which he took Sharada by slight surprise by whispering it into her ear. She nodded, as he told her the specifics. It sounded great to her.

"Oh, and Sharada, there's one more thing that you should know," the Doctor began on, hugging her loosely from behind, "It might happen, or it might not, I really, really don't know, actually, but… the amount of damage that the regenerative energy will have to repair might trigger a full regeneration. Almost like a Time Lord regeneration. You might end up different, or you might not," He told her, planting a kiss on her forehead, and hoping that she didn't, "It's a gamble, if you still want to do it. Because you don't have to, only if you want to."

"I can take those odds," Sharada smiled slightly to him, "Fancy I might be a redhead? Or have hair that's actually decided if it wants to be brown or blonde? Ooh, maybe I'll come out looking like I could be on America's Next Top Model? Actually, I don't think I would want that… I mean, they're skinny and pretty and all that, but most've them have got no boobs!" She laughed. "If I'm going to regenerate, I don't want to go _down_ a cup size, how fair is that?!"

The Doctor chuckled at this, with a slight roll of his eyes, before they just sort of looked at each other for a moment.

"This could be it," She said.

"Or it couldn't," He responded.

"Yeah," She nodded, "Still though, just incase…" Sharada drew closer to the Doctor and pressed her lips against his, in a small kiss that neither of them hardly dared to open their mouths lest any of the regenerative energy slip away back to its rightful owner.


	7. At World's End

"Okay, so, you know what to do, then,' the Doctor, a few moments after they broke off, said to Sharada.

"Uh huh," She chirped, nodding, and then began. The first part of her task came quite easy.

_I bid to re-close the Undead Gate, _Sharada chanted in her mind, envisioning what she intended, _restoring from a certain fate, the deed that has been put in place, reverse it please, and with much haste._

A bright flash of light leapt from the ball which Sharada's hands were upon and reverberated through the building, stretching out throughout the small planet of Fall River. All across the forests and shadowed alleys, the Zombies vanished, back to once they came.

The Doctor, who watched on closely as Sharada operated the Key to Reality, let a grin slide upon his face at this, though he knew that the trickier part was still to come for her; she needed to delve deeper into the Key. Sharada knew this as well, and, with a few jarring shudders at the increase of pressure, Sharada let herself become fully immersed with the Key to Reality.

The power of the Key surged through her in fiercer jolts than before, not quite painful, but not comfortable, either. It made her head spin, and the sense of her surroundings faded off, melding into a blur with the rush of images contained in the essence of Reality which filtered from the sphere and through Sharada's body, into her mind, beginning to occupy her thoughts fully.

The mixture of it all was almost overwhelming, so she shut her eyes to focus on the reality-stuff that now whizzed around in a jumble of images behind her eyelids. It was every fiber of the realms of the universe, from birth, through life, and into death… and she could see it; every dimension, every realm, every universe, and every reality.

It was huge, amazing, wonderful, despairing, and tragic all at once… and confusing. It felt so vast that, at the first rushes of Reality, it felt like it would take her forever to sort out into what she intended to do.

It wasn't quite an incantation that Sharada needed, this time, it was sort of a strong-willed, envisioned wish… _Donna, here and now, fully alive, with all of her memories restored and the Time Lord metacrisis removed…_

A golden glow began to leach out of Sharada from all directions, stopping her soul from being damaged, though it also pained every cell of her body to do so. And then, as quickly as it started, it stopped, and, albeit that she was involuntarily trembling in frigid cold, and her breaths in shallow gasps, for a few moments, Sharada was quite alright. It passed, and soom from the orb that the Canadian stood at, another blinding flash of bright light echoed into the space of the room, towards Chiswick.

Inside of the Key, unknown to the Doctor, who'd turned towards the sudden apparation behind him instead, a flurry of mysterious images flashed about before Sharada. _Hang on… was this the future?_

Meanwhile, the Doctor looked through the dimming yellow-white light that was fading from its consumption of the room, his eyes laid clearly upon who he'd never thought he'd see again in this way; Donna.

Bewildered, Donna just stared at what had just happened, a flood of recollections coming back to her as she set eyes upon the skinny pinstriped alien. She'd been in the kitchen, in Chiswick, sometime during the day of July 7th, 2008, not remembering a damned thing, and now…

"Doctor?!" Donna, who was starting to get used to these kinds of surprise meetings with him, immediately threw herself upon the Doctor, in a close hug, albeit confused, which the Doctor was reciprocating, if possible, even more than her. "Oh, it's _you_."

"I- You-…" the Doctor fumbled out, embracing Donna. This was impossible, but yet it was happening.

"So dazzled by me that you're speechless?" Donna grinned slyly at the Doctor, whose mouth was at an odd point between a smile and a gape at the moment, "… How, though? Cos I was in Chiswick, morning after you _left me_," She said those words with bitingly hurt tones, before continuing on with the rest of her sentence, "But all of a sudden I'm here, wherever 'here' is-"

"Fall River, buncha lightyears away from Earth," the Doctor supplied quickly.

"Right," Donna nodded, "Well how did I end up on Fall River, with all of my memories of you and everything we've done intact, and without the Time Lord whatsitcalled in my mind?"

"Oh, well you remember Sharada Storm, right? Stormy? The fan from Canada? Course ya do, cos you can remember everything again," the Doctor beamed in an air of 'isn't this brilliant!?', "Well, anyways, I sort of ended up picking her up, and one thing lead to another, and she altered reality. Ooh, she does sound just a bit Sue-ish there, doesn't she?"

"Of course I remember Sharada," Donna confirmed. You tended to remember the person you got kidnapped with. Twice. "So is she here then, with you?"

"Uh, huh, she's…" the Doctor began to say, chipperly, before his tone changed to sudden worry. Donna was here and fine, the Zombies were sent packing to back where they came from… so why was Sharada still tuned to the Key? "Still connected with the Key to Reality."

With his eyes wide as a hand rand through his hair in sight panic, the Doctor dashed in a turn back towards the direction of Sharada. _She should have let go once she'd gotten Donna back_, the Doctor thought… _why hadn't she_?

'Oh, please tell me you did _not_ just forget about her because you saw me?" Donna said, with a slight groan, as she set eyes upon the fan for the first time in quite a while.

"Really wish I could, Donna," the Doctor gritted, truthfully.

Sharada was in an almost hypnotic state of unawares to the Doctor and Donna, or anything else going on in the room which she stood in.

"So, what's a Key to Reality do, then?" Donna asked the Doctor, curious, "I mean, I guess it messes with reality, but what's it doing to her?"

The Doctor had no idea. Sharada was obviously seeing something, but what was it?

"Sharada?" the Doctor, his hand coming to her shoulder, which her bushy light golden brown hair fell long past, tried, "Sharada, can you hear me?"

"Doctor?" Sharada replied faintly to him, as she sort of could, and sort of couldn't. He sounded distant to her, even though he was right there beside her. Her mind swam with images of the not-so-distant future… "Ooh, you won't believe what I'm seeing, I think it's the future, and it's you, and…"

_A familiar noise, like marching mechanical boots, was echoing through every frame, there was panic, and snow, and the Doctor, and people in old fancy clothing, a cyberman… and… some silver letters saying 'Coming Christmas 2008'?_

"Oh, for fuck's sake! This is the _trailer_!" Sharada exclaimed suddenly, her green eyes flashing open and her hands finally slipping from the crystal globe. The room swayed hazily back into focus as she blinked, her head spinning with dizziness, "It might be the 'future' for you, but I've already _seen_ these clips online!"

Her face, already stupidly amused and giddy for no apparent reason, lit up even more upon seeing Donna.

And thus began the ridiculous fake Jamaican accent and shoddily-quoted Pirates of the Caribbean lines.

"_Will you sail to the ends of the earth and back_…" Sharada, in her best (best meaning horrible, in this case,) Tia Dalma impression, started, "_To fetch back your_… _Donna_? okay, I dunneven know it! But… you!"

Which was when Sharada let out one of those trademark 'Sharada Storm' high-pitched squeeley noises and squeefully hugged Donna.

"_You have a touch of destiny about you_, _Sharada Storm_," Donna said, in a much better faux Tia accent than Sharada, as she embraced the fan.

"_But if you will brave the weird and haunted shores at world's end,_" From closeby, the Doctor, began, though the second part of what he'd said was pretty much drowned out by a sporfle of surprised laughter from the two companions, "_then you will need a captain who knows those waters_," He finished, with a slight raise of his eyebrow.

"You know, I really can't imagine not being able to be around, or at least remember, -that-," Donna said, with a look at the Doctor, to Sharada, with a grateful smile, "Thanks."

"Well it was the Doctor's idea, really," Sharada said, sort of modestly, "I just did it cuz I could, cuz of what happened when he snogged me- what?" She paused to ask as she noticed the look on Donna's face at the mention of the Sharada/Ten snoggage, "It wasn't, like… _romantically_, he doesn't fancy me, it was just-"

"To transfer a small amount of residual regenerative energy," the Doctor hastily interjected, "She broke her leg -badly-, I thought it could help, that's all."

"Like hell it's 'that's all'," With a complete toss of her blue eyes, Donna looked at him with exasperation, "Less than a day ago, you left Rose, who was bloody _in love_ with you, and then you left _me_, and now you're all shacking up with her!"

"_Donna_… it's not like that," the Doctor stated, almost pleadingly, to her, taken quite aback, "I _don't_ fancy Sharada, I mean, no offense at all, I think she's incredibly gorgeous and clever and cute and maybe I do have the _tiniest_ bit of a flirt with her, but… I… I fancy _you_, alright?"

He'd finally admitted it.

"You… what?" Donna looked shocked. It wasn't a bad sort of shocked, though, she realized… just… surprising. But hadn't she felt the same way, as well?

"I fancy you, I knowIsaidIjustwantedamatebutIsortoffoundmyselffallinginlovewithyouand," the Doctor said in one very fast breath, the thing which had been on his mind for quite a while now, "I love you, Donna Noble. If you don't feel the same way it's completely ok, I just thought I'd finally-"

"Oh, of _course_ I do, you prawn!" Donna blurted honestly, still looking shocked, but with the beginning of a very ecstatic smile, right before taking the Doctor by a bit of surprise as she kissed him deeply and lovingly.

* * *

**Author's Note: You have noooooo idea how long this chapter took me to write! Why? Cuz I kept changing bits of it till I got something I was happy with, that's why! And yes, even though I do ship both of them with a few other characters, Doctor/Donna is my OTP. And I am sooo guilty as charged now with writing shippy reunion fic! :p (just not apparently the pairing that seems to get the most of it?).**

**There's I think going to be one more chapter to Zombies of Fall River, to tie up a couple of loose ends, and then it's off to… somewhere! Haha, I know where it is… it's somewhere we all know from Cannon eps. Twice. **


	8. An Unseen Enemy

"Mm," the Doctor made a soft sound as his and Donna's lips parted after a while, dazedly savoring what had happened in the last few minutes.

Donna smiled contentedly, something gorgeous about the way his arms felt around her at this moment.

"What?" She said finally, curious at the way he'd been looking at her for a moment after they'd broken off.

The Doctor said nothing, but dove into another kiss. He'd been more broken over his abrupt and tragic departure with Donna than he'd let on to Sharada during the last day. But that was it though, trying to move on, with someone new like always… but with one brilliant stroke of luck and chance in a one in a million shot, he was with her, Donna, again. Whether they were mates or _mates_, he didn't particularly care, just as long as they were together.

"I could get used to this, spaceman," Donna said to him, slightly surprised at herself.

" 'Forever', then, earthgirl?" the Doctor said to her, with a grin.

"Oh, yeah." She confirmed, "We'll get it right this time, yeah? No wiping my mind anymore, alright? Cos I love this, traveling with you."

A thunderous noise suddenly shook the large old house which the Doctor and Donna, as well as Sharada, were in, like a loud booming cackle.

"What was that?" Sharada whipped around in all directions. It felt like a small earthquake had just occurred underneath the wood-paneled floor on the level below them. "Congrats for you two, by the way, I love it. OTP." Sharada added, to the Doctor and Donna, with a squeefull, happy-for-them, kind of beam.

"Oh, Doctor, you are too good," A disembodied female voice echoed through the room. Whoever it was sounded very pleased about something.

"Well, it wasn't as if he had that much of a choice in the matter, dear," A male voice added, in a booming cackle. Sharada and the Doctor recognized this voice.

"Yes, and outsmarting a _puppet_ must've been _so_ difficult," The unfamiliar cold female voice continued to ring out in sarcasm.

The Doctor looked 'round, trying to spot the source of the voices.

"What do mean, 'puppet'?" He inquired, "And who are you? _Where_ are you?"

As he asked this, Donna glanced to Sharada.

"You two are in the middle of saving a planet, aren't you?" Donna said to Sharada.

"Yep," She nodded eagerly, "Gonna help? I'm _so_ rubbish at doing this Companion stuff on my own."

"You're _not_, but, yeah," Donna replied, with a sort of a nodding grin.

"I am, though; I spent most of the last trip just stressing over if he thought I was good enough to have along," Sharada told her, "You're a hard act to follow, you know."

"Right, because forgetting about star 69 was _such_ a stroke of genius," Donna said sarcastically, though she looked complemented, anyways.

The disembodied voices spoke out in the air again.

"You played right into my hand, Doctor," the unfamiliar female continued, "Oh, you are a clever man sometimes, but even you never saw this coming… you and your 'saving people' thing."

"Right, but you said 'puppet', who is the puppet?" the Doctor pressed. There was a strange feeling of Déjà vu that he couldn't quite shake about the sharp female. But who was she?

The unseen woman chuckled, her voice resonating through the room.

"Wayve, here, is so _talented_ with those..." She said, "The Departed Fifth is as flesh and blood as anyone, but yet _so fake_, and you never saw it. Our perfect puppet scapegoat to unleash the living dead."

"Oh, I knew," The Doctor told her, as he did suspect that there was something strange about Dvina, "How else would I know what strings to pull to get her to leave? The only question now is whose puppet is she? I think I've been talking to thin air for long enough, here."

"Oh, very well, Doctor," the woman sighed, a tinge of annoyance to her voice, "Wavye, do me the honors."

Into the room, the elderly spell-weaver from earlier materialized, looking distinctly smug.

"And now before me are exactly the two things she needs," Wayve said, looking towards the three, Sharada and Donna in particular, before he idly stroked an ornate locket which hung around his neck.

"Donna," Sharada hissed to her in a low whisper, "I've read too many 'you're secretly a fob-watched Time Lord' fanfics to think that that woman is not in -there-," Sharada concluded, indicating the locket. It was not of Gallifreyan design, a bit more Pagan in its etchings, but he still seemed to be fingering it with an awful lot of fondness.

The female's voice spoke out again, though no corporeal body that it was coming from could be seen.

"Regenerative energy," The woman explained, "And a body… and choices, choices, have I got two astounding candidates here."

"You'll be taking none of our bodies," Donna glared in heated warning.

"Ah, yes, you still think you have a choice in the matter," The woman said, witheringly, "Wayve… you know what to do."

Quickly muttering a flurry of words under his breath, Wayve threw out his hand before anyone could do anything, and the three of them, the Doctor, Donna, and Sharada, became still on the spot from the force of the spell, as if frozen, though none of them were turned to ice.

As Wayve walked towards them keenly, the disembodied woman spoke again.

"It all depends what exactly I want to do, now," She pondered, as the elderly man pressed the cold crystal tip of his staff to the skin of Sharada's chest, just slightly above the low-cut neckline of her emerald green t-shirt. A second after he did so, a rushing sound was heard as all of the fiery gold regeneration energy which had built up, and remained, despite the two times it had been used, inside of her human body seeped out of her and into the large teardrop-shaped crystal, making it gave off the signature yellow glow of regeneration as it held the energy.

"I daresay I'm not _expert _on 21st Century American politics, but even in my old homeworld, a nineteen year old running mate would be a very far cry," She continued to decide, shifting her unseen gaze off of the dark blonde and onto the redhead, decisively, who she thought looked smarter and more candidatial. Besides, she was used to being ginger, "I do think that settles it, then."

Wayve, following her command, came closer to Donna, withdrawing from a small beige satchel a small vial filled with a potent turquoise-hued sleeping potion. As the liquid slid down her throat, Donna fell from one spell into another and drooped loosely, unconscious.

With a flick of Wayve's hand, Dvina, obliviously to the motionless Doctor and Sharada, appeared into the room, standing near the unconscious Donna and looking distinctly obedient.

"Get us to the alter," The woman's voice spoke out again, towards Dvina.

Dvina nodded regally in understanding as Wayve handed her the gold-glowing clear crystal from his staff as well as the intricately carved bronze locket from around his neck.

"And what of the other two?" Wayve inquired, towards the unseen woman, his eyes flickering towards the jewelry in Dvina's hand.

"Kill them," The cruel female voice answered, with wicked enthusiasm, as if savoring the idea deliciously, just before Dvina laid her other palm upon Donna and dissapparated the three of them from the room.

Wayve, following their transportation, looked satisfied as he took a step backwards and raised his staff into the air.

"The timeless foe is quite a sight, to slay upon this moonlit night," Wayve began to recite in a chant, his sharp-ended staff held like a javelin towards the Doctor's statued body, "Spear be guided to the point which serves best-"

* * *

**A/N: Ha, if this were an episode of Classic Who, there'd soooo be the credits rolling right about now. And the fic just keeps going and going… This is NOT the last chapter, nomatter what I said last chapter in the Author's Note… I'm not really sure how many chapters are left, actually, cuz basically I'm just making this stuff up as I go along hehe. I'm so rubbish at getting the Doctor and Donna right, though, but I guess practice or something… I don't think I know exactly where the next fic is going to take place, either, since I've got a lot of ideas in my mind for it at the moment.  
**


	9. More Than Ordinary

…"_Spear be guided to the point which serves best-"_

Just as Wayve recited the words, the pointed end of his staff thrust fixedly towards the Doctor's chest, the Doctor began to stir, and his situation spring back to life.

"And be countered by that you _can't hypnotize someone to death,_" The Doctor, the spear around an inch from piercing into him, swiftly took ahold of it with the momentum as Wavye drove it forwards and twisted it around so that the stake-like end was working in his own favor, "Ha!"

Wayve was taken by surprise to find his staff out of his hands and in the Doctor's so quickly.

"Learned that trick from Ganjas Kahn. Brilliant with a stick, bit've a temper, though," The Doctor shrugged, then glanced around to where Sharada was still in the spell and standing stock-still and where Donna was no nowhere to be found, "Now, what have you done with Donna?" He directed to Wayve.

"As if I'd actually tell you," The old man huffed, "What kind of fool do you take me for, Doctor?"

"A fool who's standing at the end of a big pointy stick," The Doctor replied.

"She has told me of you, and I hardly believe for a second that you actually intend to stab me with that," Wayve dismissed, nonchalantly.

"You want to test that?" That Doctor began, his tone dangerous, "Cos I've already though I lost her once, and I am _not_ going to lose her again. I'm giving you once chance only, so tell me what the woman in the locket wanted with Donna's body, and where you've taken her."

Reluctantly, Wayve spilled with it.

"Sarah desires a Gallifreyan body and mind," Wayve explained, "The immediate _plan_ was to summon your TARDIS here after convincing the remainder of my circle that, due to the Zombie outbreak, we were in dire need of your help, and then transform any random human that you happened to be with at the time into a suitable Time Lady using your regenerative energy."

"A Time Lady? Well that's a bit particular," The Doctor considered, "Unless this Sarah in the locket originally was a fob-watched Time Lord, like you were saying Sharada… Sharada?" He looked to her, still finding that she was still under the spell and unresponsive to what he was saying. With a sigh, the Doctor turned his direction back towards Wayve, "Mind taking that spell off her? It feels like I'm talking to a statue… Ah, that's better," He saw as she came to life again.

Sharada just sort of looked around at first, seeing as everything had changed in the last few minutes.

"So… Sarah, Donna, where?" The Doctor questioned Wayve, quickly, as he assumed that Dvina and Sarah weren't going to be wasting time with the plan, and the longer he took interrogating Wayve, the closer that Donna was to being taken over.

"The altar," Wayve told him.

"This is a big house, so where exactly _is_ the altar?" The Doctor, just prior to making off for it, asked to Wayve.

"Down the stairway, to your left, and the last room at the end of the hallway," Wayve resentfully admitted to the Doctor.

"Brilliant then, gotta go," The Doctor beamed slightly, "Allons-y… coming, Stormy?"

"Yup," She chirped, tearing after him and out of the doorway. She paused for half a second, just outside of the doorframe, though.

"A door is strong, but far too weak," Sharada incanted quickly, saying the first thing which sprung to mind, "A field of force is what I seek."

The Doctor, with raised eyebrows, poked the air between the doorway, wondering what she'd done, if anything. It felt as if someone had molded a slab of clear Jell-O inside of the frame of the door, solid, but sort of rubbery.

"That… is impressive," He remarked, completely bemused. There was something about Sharada that was weirdly off, he'd been noticing lately. Not a bad off, not as if she were possessed or cloned or anything of that sort, no, he was completely sure that Sharada was one hundred percent herself, but what was it about her that made her take so easily to magic in this situation? She'd done things, like absorb and multiply Time Lord energy without it having any lasting effect on her, that an average human _shouldn't_ technically be able to do, but why? "Incredible, really."

"Thanks," She shrugged it off, as they carried on in their hurry to the alter downstairs, "If you know how it works, please tell me, because I have no idea how I'm doing all of this stuff, either."

"It's almost like you're… ohh," The Doctor considered. He paused slightly once they'd gotten to the bottom of the steps, catching a gaze into her forest green eyes.

"Like I'm what?" Sharada, curious as to why he was looking at her like this, because she _knew_ what it meant when the Doctor's brown eyes were looking into yours in a searching sort of way, asked.

"You've been a witch since you were eight years old," He told her, "Only, well, you've probably never noticed, because I mean, aside from the odd 'wingardium leviosa' for the TV remote, how many people actually go around trying to cast spells with any kind of dedication to it?"

Sharada thought for a moment.

"I have. When I was younger I used to _pretend_ I was a witch and cast spells for a bunch of stupid things like to make it snow in the morning or to make toast pop up... they'd sometimes work and I always thought it was just lucky timing… you mean I'm seriously a witch? Like…" Sharada asked, whilst twitching her nose like Samantha in Bewitched, a skill she'd be able to do for near a decade.

It made sense; ever since about the age of eight, she'd had a bit of a fascination with all things magical and witchey.

"Yup," The Doctor nodded.

"But _how_ am I a witch? How does that work?" She wondered.

"There are a lot of different forces that make up the universe, some things that can't easily be explained and more realms than you can imagine, billions of realms, and one of those is the supernatural," He explained, "And while you _are_ as human as the next person, you're unique, and it turns out that the immutable laws of physics-"

Whatever came next in that sentence, it didn't (at that time, anyways), as they just reached the door to the room which had been described as the location of the altar. Shoving it open unceremoniously, they came into the altar.

It was a moderately sized room, draped heavily in exotic-looking cloths and beholding numerous amounts of mythical figures and statues. An antique shelf stood stacked with volumes of thick books on magick to one wall and, in the very center of the room their eyes gazed upon Donna, who had been laid out upon a raised stone diesis around the size of a circular bed, deeply asleep.

Nearly stepping into the circle of candles which tightly surrounded the stone diesis, the Doctor rushed to her side. He was relieved to see the rise and fall of her buxom chest; she was alive still.

"Donna…?" He tried to rouse her, his hands coming to her body in a gentle shake, urging her to wake up from whatever it was she was under. He got no response from her, Donna's face still still in a peaceful look of sleep, "Donna, come on, you have to wake up now," The Doctor was hurried, as a glance around the room told him that, though Dvina was suspiciously not there at the moment, it was only a matter of time before she returned.

"She will not wake," Too late. Dvina's voice sounded from the other side of the pentagram-engraved diesis. She held the locket in one hand, and the crystal in the other. The crystal was peculiarly transparent and white, rather than the yellow glow that had been inside of it before.

Sharada nudged the Doctor, who'd looked up from Donna at Dvina and Sarah's arrival, "Snog her while you still have the chance," She told him in a quiet hiss. Her look and shrug read 'well, that's how it works in every fairy tale, just try it'.

"Bite your tongue, foul witch," Sarah, from inside the bronze locket, glowered at Sharada.

"Then tell me what you are," Sharada was trying to buy time for the Doctor to wake Donna, "Why are you all in a locket without a body for?"

"My body died quite some time ago," Sarah said, "But I found a way to let my mind live on, in ever search of the perfect new form to embody…"

As she was speaking, the Doctor drew his lips down to Donna's. He knew the stories as well, of dashing knights and noble princesses, _She was beautiful,_ the Doctor thought, his lips at first brushing lightly against hers, and then with more pressure, evolving into a fully fairy tale-like kiss. Soon, he felt the first motions of the break in her slumber as Donna began to kiss him back. Her mouth widened and her tongue pushed thought the part in his lips, entwining with his, just as her light blue eyes fluttered open, officially breaking through her tranquil, statuesque state of just before. She smiled as they came apart and he helped her off of the circular slab of stone.

Meanwhile, Sarah had continued to talk.

"… and finally, I discovered it. A Time Lord, once the most magnificent race in the universe," Sarah told them, "And especially so, as the mind and body of one comes with certain useful amenities… regeneration, psychic abilities, respiratory bypass, and the list just goes on… I mean, why settle for any old car, when you can drive a Porsche!"

"Sarah, I can help; I can get you a form to live in, but you're not taking Donna's, or any other living person's," The Doctor addressed Sarah with his offer.

"I think not, Doctor," Sarah said, disapprovingly, "After all this time and effort put into my plan, and your Donna having such a wonderfully good body, I still intend fully on finishing carrying it out."

"You're right," Donna spoke out, causing heads to turn in her direction, "About a Time Lord body and mind being really useful. And I should know, because _I_," She indicated herself, with a grin, "Have got both."

The heads which had turned in her direction were now looking at her with a bit of a 'how?' expression.

"Sharada, sorry luv, but you didn't actually get rid of the Time Lord consciousness when you used the Key of Reality; you did something _better_. It became my _own_ Time Lord mind, instead of the Doctor's," Donna said, triumphantly, "But there's still a bit of the problem with a Time Lord mind in a human body, so when I figured out what you were all up to, I made a point to put one of those uses to use and psychically convinced you, Sarah, to choose me over her. And here I am, full-fledged Time Lady, two hearts and all!"

"That's brilliant…" Sharada looked at her, awestruck, the first one to say anything to this, "Seriously?"

"Yes, seriously!" Donna told her, "Go on, feel them; _two_, beating like his do. It is a bit weird, actually, guess it'll take some getting used to."

Sharada did so, placing her hands upon Donna's chest. Sure enough, she felt the rhythms of two hearts beating away beneath them.

"Hey, guess what," Sharada said to Donna, as it suddenly occurred to her, "I'm a witch, you're a Time Lady; guess that means that ends the whole 'getting kidnapped cuz we're regular Muggles' thing, eh?"

"We're still going to get kidnapped nomatter what, though," Donna laughed.

"Like major," Sharada agreed, with a smile, and a nodding roll of her eyes. Travelling with the Doctor equals wonderful, but it also equals the fact that she'd almost be willing to bet money on either herself, Donna, or the Doctor ending up knocked out and tied up to something during the course of wherever they decided to go to next.

* * *

_Quickie A/N: 'Sarah' does NOT equal Sarah Jane Smith in some warped future… It's a super common name and I named this character before I actually realized that there's another person in the Whoniverse with the same first name. Just mentioning this incase anyone else noticed my naming muck up and thought there was more to this elusive 'Sarah' than meets the eye, which maybe there is, but it's definitely not that._


	10. Fire

"So, do you get kidnapped a lot or something, since it's been just you and him?" Donna asked her, wondering.

"Just once," Sharada shrugged, at Donna's question on the topic, "With cats… Oh, you know where they were from! _Martian_. _Cats._ They were these ugly little things, but then they got _huge_, and I know I'm all into Animal Rights, but these things were _evil-_" She was saying this all very fast, in a weird sense that it was the first time that she'd gotten a proper chance to tell Donna all about what she'd missed, "We've only been to one place so far, and it was just London in about 100 years, you haven't really missed _that_ much… saw a flying car, though, that was cool."

Donna had totally and utterly forgotten about Sharada's accent, which was the only Canadian accent she'd ever really heard in person, aside from a few tourists once, who had less-thick accents than her. It was the weirdest thing to hear spoken fast, crazy-thick, but she liked it, anyways. And then the strangest feeling of intuition and insight overtook Donna, just as she was noticing the fans's accent… it was more of an image than anything, as it flashed through her mind.

"_Have you got your Save-On-Card_?" _God, I say 'card' weird… I sound like I'm on Corner Gas… A female with her light brown hair done up in a ponytail and dressed in a short sleeved white blouse and black pants, with a short uniform green smock tied at her hips and a nametag pinned just above her right breast, was saying/thinking from behind a till._

Sharada felt it as well. That was random…

"Donna…" She looked to her, curiously, "Are you reading my mind or something?"

"Well, I'm not _trying_ to… that just… happened," Donna responded, slightly apologetically, since she completely didn't mean to do that. "… So you're a checkout girl?"

"_Was_," Sharada smiled happily, "I just quit yesterday, when the Doctor showed up. I was running upstairs to grab my purse, and then I just decided I might as well give my two weeks while I was up there."

The Doctor, who was quite honestly wondering why they were choosing now, of all times to catch up, and why neither of them were paying the slightest attention to the fact that there was still a body-snatching witch and her accomplice on the other side of the diesis, looked suddenly to Sharada.

"Hang on, you quit your job because of me?" He asked her. Did travelling with him mean more to her than he'd thought? She obviously fancied him, there was no question about that, because she was a fan and he had no problem with it on that level, but there wasn't more to it than just a bit of a flirt… was there? He wondered, slightly worried, because of not wanting to have her be distraught and feeling jilted if they ever did end up parting, for whatever reasons.

"Oh, it was rubbish job, I was going to dump it really soon, anyways," She told him, brightly. It had served it's purpose, she'd landed a job and worked and gotten the experience, but three months was a long enough time to do something that she didn't really like and wasn't all that good at, and she wanted to do something else now, whether she was traveling with the Doctor or not. "It's _totally_ not what I want to be doing."

And right now, she'd much rather be seeing the universe and facing all sorts of random things with the Doctor, and now Donna, than being stuck in the same small town and asking people if they wanted their milk in a bag or not. How boring. She wondered what he meant by that question, anyways… was he going to dump her, now that he could be with Donna? _Of course he wouldn't_, she thought, _but there was still that thing about how she was apparently "too" something… too what? Bad at being a companion? _The thought panged her…

Donna, on the other hand, had somehow just heard _all_ of their thoughts about Sharada wondering if the Doctor wanted her, and then the Doctor's worrying if these trips meant more to her than he knew, and, well, it was just a bit annoying, in her opinion, because, of course, neither of them would ever say something about it to each other, and both of them were completely wrong and fretting over, possibly, the stupidest things she could ever imagine them worrying about.

Hit by a fierce wave of dizziness, Donna, suddenly, at the onslaught of their thoughts that had whirl winded through her mind, winced, caught off guard and overwhelmed with it.

"Donna?"

"Are you okay?"

She opened her eyes to find both of them at her side, looking concerned, and she nodded, the disoriented feel of having two separate people's thoughts and emotions, as well as your own, rushing through your head at the same time subsiding slightly.

"Do you two ever hear yourselves think, sometimes?" Donna wondered aloud, turning to the Doctor, "Right, because every single person you meet has to have no life of their own and fancy you to death," She rolled her eyes, exasperatedly, "Well, she _does _probably fancy you a lot, but she isn't like every other person who's liked you, because she's a fan, she watches the show, and, unlike Rose or me, she _doesn't_ ever see herself doing this forever." Donna pointed out, then looked to Sharada, "And sometimes I really can't tell if you do watch the show, because he is _not going to ditch you_," She assured, "And especially not because I'm back. It was some stupid noble reason of not wanting to take you on and then lose you that her said 'no' at first, and there was _nothing_ in his mind that was ever going to follow the 'too', because you're, like, incredible, seriously."

"Thanks… So, you're alright, then?" Sharada asked.

"I think so, yeah," Donna nodded, the weirdly overwhelmed sensation having nearly vanished by this point, and most of the thoughts inside of her head at the moment being those of her own. She looked to the Doctor, on the other side of her, "What just happened, there?"

"Your mind was receiving more of our thoughts faster than you could consciously process them," He answered, whilst massaging around the back of her neck comfortingly. "… Just try to slow down, and maybe lay off the psychic stuff for a bit, hmm?"

"Okay," Donna replied, in a small voice. The Doctor was very good with his hands, she was noticing, and she relaxed slightly, finding that she wasn't accidentally reading either of their minds right now, which she was thankful for.

From on the other side of the pentagram-engraved stone diesis, four bored-sounding seal claps were heard from Dvina.

"Bravo," Dvina clapped, dully, looking to Donna, "You're a Time Lady, he's a self-absorbed idiot, and she has to be about the densest thing I have ever met… can we get on with this, now?"

A surge of fury shot up through Donna at Dvina's slag of the Doctor and Sharada, and she stepped forwards, to one side of the circular stone.

"No, we bloody are _not _going to 'get on with this', who the hell do you think you are?" shot Donna, "You know nothing about them! And you can't just go stealing people's bodies, bimbo-"

"I turned you into a Time Lady, and that's all you have to say?" Dvina interrupted, scornfully, coming forwards on that side as well, "Aren't you the least bit grateful that now you're not-"

"You know you didn't actually _do _anything, right?" Donna retorted, "I could've done it myself if I'd've snogged Sharada like I was going to before you lot showed up."

Dvina snorted.

"Good thing we did show up, or you'd've lost brain cells, kissing that ditz-" Dvina's scoff was cut off by a harsh slap from Donna.

The voice from the locket, Sarah, hissed out half a moment later, as Dvina's hand flew, stunned, to where Donna, who was getting seriously pissed off at the cocky fake blonde woman, had just hit her.

"You are wasting time, Dvina," Sarah spoke, "Stop provoking my future body, and let me complete the spell."

Sharada glanced to Sarah, and then the ring of candles around the alter, and, struck by an idea, darted in a bound onto the diesis and reached for where Dvina had laid the locket.

"I think there's a legend, somewhere, that they burned witches because fire was the only thing that would destroy them and keep them from coming back to haunt people," Sharada recalled, dangling the locket close to the flames.

"It is also known that if a witch knowingly sends another witch to the flames," Sarah addressed Sharada, "They will be stripped of their powers for the betrayal. Do you _really _want to continue your little plan?"

"If it means keeping you from _your_ plans, then yes," Sharada said, "I don't give a damn if I'm a witch or not, but I do care if you take over Donna, and I do care if you use her body to take over the world." She let the necklace chain drop even closer towards the burning candles.

The chain broke before she'd released it, and, inside of the locket, the bodiless Sarah fell square onto the center of a large white candle. Large yellow and orange flames enveloped the locket, and leaked through the cracks on either side.

Sharada knew, before she saw him, and turned to see the Doctor, knelt on the diesis just behind her, with his sonic screwdriver pointed in the direction of the spot in the chain where the necklace had snapped.

"I'm sorry," He said, looking to Sharada, solemnly. It was true, what Sarah had said about the cost of a witch's betrayal.

"Don't be," She answered, scooting backwards, and hugging him.

"I thought if it was more on me than you, then maybe it wouldn't really…" He began, though, with the same gaze into her eyes as before, he could tell that she was no longer a witch, "I never meant to cause you to lose your powers."

She looked at him.

"Did the fact that I'm a witch have anything to do with anything else about me?" She asked, "I mean, am I still going to be able to write, and draw, and have a really good memory for things I care about remembering, and be a crazy batshit Animal Rights person as well as I could before?"

"I… don't see why not," the Doctor responded, "You didn't ever really _use_ your magic, you just sort of had it, like one of those free ten percent off coupons for something you're not going to buy anyways that just sits around the house or wherever you've stuck it till either someone tosses it or it expires. Oh, I bet you're sick of coupons, aren't you? You probably get people paying for entire _orders_ with those… well, I know on one planet, it's the law, but really, being behind someone like that can get a bit-"

"Try _ringing them up_!" She exclaimed, with a slight laugh, "And you know they're going to be watching your _every move_ to make sure you don't accidentally charge them two cents more because you typed in the wrong bin number. See… that's why I quit, because it wasn't very fun, and the hours got really annoying… not just because my whole life depends on you, which it doesn't."

"So, you're okay with not being a witch?" He asked her.

Sharada smiled.

"I got a dissection choice policy at my high school because I wrote to the school board, not because I cast a spell," She stated. "Somehow, I went ten years being a witch without hardly noticing, and if you knew half the stuff I've done on my own, with no magic of any kind, you'd be amazed."

Actually, if she thought about it, she'd rather not be a witch, because she wanted to prove _herself_, not be overshadowed by this thing of 'oh, she did it with witchcraft'.

Donna, who'd been looking back and forth between where Sharada and the Doctor were sitting and where Dvina now stood, motionless on the spot, as if she were only a shop dummy, ever since the locket had been dropped into the fire, suddenly took notice of a tremor that shook the house.

"Are the walls supposed to be doing that?" She pointed out the bubbling grey cracks that were splitting down the wallpaper and wood as the floorboards continued to shake. Candles and potions ingredients bottles were topping over, as the Doctor and Sharada quickly stood up from their seats on the stone, and the flames that had collided with the leaked oils lit up in fiery bangs, spreading their embers onto the draped cloths as the walls continued to sway and split.

Bits of roof crumbled downwards, narrowly missing their heads as the three of them began to run for the exit. The house was combusting on itself in Sarah's dying rage.

* * *

**A/N: Zombies of Fall River... possibly the worst writing, and maybe characterization, on the planet Y/N? Oh well, I can't write either Donna or the Doctor worth crap, I think... but I love them, anyways. And could I have possibly named the 'villains' anything less confusing while I'm writing them... oh, yes, let's have them start with a 'D' and an 'S' and both end with 'a' sounds like the two companions. -Eyeroll-. I don't think you're supposed to pronounce the 'D' in Dvina, anyways. I do love my fic, though, so I can make fun of it's shitty writing and made-up-as-I-go plot as I please XP**


	11. Forever Again

"Sonic them!" Sharada was yelling to the Doctor, as a rush of flames, around five feet in height, burst up into the hallway, blocking their path. The smell of burning wood and wallpaper wafted in a tick grey smoke all around them. She'd seen him do something with fire with the Sonic Screwdriver before, she thought.

"Trying to!" He called back, his sonic screwdriver fixed on snuffing the impending row of fire. It was to no avail, as, despite the correct setting and his efforts, the flames still continued to singe their way through the hall, coming closer towards them.

"Haven't you got anything else? A sonic… fire-extinguisher?" Donna, seeing that the screwdriver was doing nothing against the massive path-blocking flames, asked him, as she looked backwards to find that the doorway to the altar, just behind them, was now filled with fire as well.

Sharada was looking to the ceiling, in search of something that she could not see. Sprinklers.

"Shit," Shar swore, panicky, "Shit, _shit_… I am _not_ going to die in a burning thing!"

As the heavy smoke continued to grow in volume, enveloping them, Sharada was finding it harder to breathe. _If we get killed here, it's totally my fault… but this is totally exciting if we don't._

"Got it!" the Doctor exclaimed, as the fire, while not going out, shifted itself to the sides, leaving a narrow, human-sized path through it, "Very sonic-ey, and slightly fire extinguish-ey," He flipped the sonic screwdriver in the air, catching it, before holding it in his teeth, each of his hands occupied with one of theirs as they hurried through the gap.

"That thing can separate _fire_, but it can't open a wooden door?!" Donna, just after making their way to the other side of the row of fire, exclaimed.

The Doctor shrugged, dropping the sonic screwdriver back into his hand.

"Yep," He said, as they continued down the long hallway, "Doesn't do much for pleather, either."

"Almost feel like it should get its own national holiday, the amount of times it's saved our lives," She said, eyeing the device appreciatively. Seeing the front door soon up ahead, they turned the corner into the front hall.

"Oi, I'll have you know that I _have_ gone years at one time without one and somehow managed to survive," He replied, "Still… you're a good sonic screwdriver, aren't you?" He spoke in a way that you'd do when petting a puppy, glancing to it.

"Oh, veerrryy good," Donna continued it, giving the screwdriver an affectionate pet, "What's that? You want a few more mates?" She grinned.

The Doctor responded by catching her around the waist as soon as the three of them were out of the crumbing house, holding her close to him with a grin upon his face.

"Ooh, I've missed you!" He told Donna.

"Cos I pet your sonic screwdriver?" Donna, with a slight laugh, looked at him.

"You know where I want to take you?" the Doctor began to say, rocking up on the balls of his feet, "Everywhere. To every corner of the universe."

"Well, you're going to have to," Donna smiled, nudging into him, "Cos I'm not going anywhere… you're stuck with me again, spaceman."

"Wouldn't want it any other way," He said, kissing her.

**-The End-**

**-Until the next story, anyways-**


End file.
